After jamming with a friend, she commented that she felt emotionally spent afterwards. Not quite sure what she meant, I asked her to elaborate. She said that improvising music makes you feel vulnerable. You’ve got to put yourself out there, which opens you up to judgement and criticism.

And she’s right. In that moment I realized that being a designer trained me to get over that fear. I know I have to start somewhere shitty before I can get somewhere good. Putting myself and my ideas out there is part of that process. My work only becomes good through feedback and iteration.

So my advice to you, young designer, is to accept the fact that before your work becomes great, it’s going to be shitty. This will be hard at first. You’ll feel vulnerable. You’ll fear judgement. You’ll worry about losing the respect of your colleagues.

But get over it. We’ve all felt this way before. Just remember that we’re all in this together. We all want to produce great work for our customers. We all want to make great music together.

So get comfortable sharing your shitty work. You’ll start off discordant, but through the process of iteration and refinement you’ll eventually hit your groove.